Sharpe's Regiment

of Britain's army. In the early years of the war senior commissions would be given to a man who brought the army enough recruits; indeed, that is how Sir Henry Simmerson achieved his Lieutenant Colonelcy in the novel that opened this series, Sharpe's Eagle. Such shifts were desperately needed for, with the exception of a few prime Regiments like the Rifles and the Guards, most units were chronically short of recruits; a shortage not helped by the existence of the home-bound militia that drained good men from the regular army.

The Prince Regent was fond of victory parades in Hyde Park, especially when enemy trophies were laid before him. The Royal family of the Regency period did not enjoy the affection that the present British Royal family receives from the public. It was not an attractive family. King George III had lost his sanity because of illness and his eldest son was a lavish wastrel who hated his father. Indeed, so unpopular was the Royal family, that the valet of the King's youngest son was roundly applauded by the populace when he laid his master's scalp open with a sabre stroke. The parades in Hyde Park, as well as indulging the Prince Regent's soldiering fantasies, unusually allowed him to appear in public to adulation rather than jeers. The British public, though never very fond of the army, was proud of what it was doing under Wellington's command, and would turn out to cheer dutifully in Hyde Park or to watch the patriotic pageants mounted in London's theatres.

The Prince Regent, after he had become King, did publicly express his fantasies that he had been present at battlefields during the late war. He would embarrass Wellington by claiming, at dinner, to have led a charge at Waterloo. The Duke kept a politic silence.

A politic silence is also best kept about Foulness. It was not a secret military camp in 1813; it is now.

So Sharpe and Harper are back with the army. They, like so many officers and men of that army, now have their wives with them, and they have, at last, breached the defences of France. Wellington is the first foreign General to invade French soil since the very beginning of the Revolutionary War twenty years earlier. There was a feeling, that winter of 1813, that Napoleon would surely sue for peace soon. He was assailed in the north and his beloved France was invaded from the south. But there are battles yet to be fought, and campaigns to be won, so Sharpe and Harper will march again.